The effects of acoustic and lexical factors on perception of accented speech

Abstract

Foreign-accented speech differs from native pronunciation on a variety of spectral and temporal properties that affect both accentedness and intelligibility. The specific acoustic correlates, however, as well as the role of signal-independent lexical characteristics on accentedness judgments and intelligibility, remain unclear. The current study examined the potential contribution of particular acoustic (F1, F2, duration) and lexical (frequency, neighborhood density) factors to native speakers' ratings of accentedness and assessments of intelligibility for English words spoken by native Spanish speakers. Previous research has found that in native English speech, hard words (low frequency, high neighborhood density) have more dispersed vowel spaces relative to easy words (Pardo et al., 2013). Preliminary findings in the current study indicate the opposite pattern such that foreign-accented easy words exhibited more vowel dispersion than hard words. Further, vowel dispersion measures for easy, but not hard,...